Anne
Galjour: Inspired by Southern rootsHurricanes
and heavy rains were par for the course in Lafourche Parish, La., where
Creative Writing Lecturer Anne Galjour was born and raised. Power outages
and flooding streets meant school cancellations and running home to huddle
with parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. By the light of a gas-burning
lamp, Galjour listened to elder relatives swap stories of the Galveston,
Texas Great Hurricane of 1900. "Parents tied children to the branches
of tall trees. … The water would rise and they would have to untie
them and hope their children would make it," Galjour said.

Twenty
five years have passed since she left Louisiana, but the landscape
of her childhood
lives on in her award-winning solo show "Hurricane." The
play, which Galjour wrote in 1992 following Hurricane Andrew, was inspired
by time spent along the Mississippi Delta: the electricity in the air
before a storm, trawling for shrimp in the marshes with her father, and
the alligator that made its way onto a neighbor's front porch steps.
Sadly, "Hurricane" is now a living document of places washed
away. Katrina leveled Grand Isle, La., and other areas that are part
of Galjour's earliest memories.

Between teaching two playwriting classes during the fall semester, Galjour
has helped the Gulf Coast region get back on its feet. Teaming with the
Z Space Studio, Galjour has performed her one-woman show at theaters
in Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Seattle, with proceeds going
to Habitat for Humanity and arts organizations throughout New Orleans.

She's optimistic
about the city's future, largely because of the outpouring of support
she's witnessed across the country and especially at SFSU.
Galjour recalled a visit to Lecturer Matthew Davison's class where she
witnessed his creative writing students place nearly $600 in a box for
hurricane relief. "These are students," she said, pointing
out that most don't have money to spare.

Galjour
taught her first class at SFSU in 2000 and continues to feel a special
connection
with her students. "What I love about teaching
at State is that some of the students I teach [will be] the first in
their family to graduate college, like I was," Galjour said. She
studied English at Nicholls State University in Louisiana.

She added
that many students stay in touch with their roots, whether they are
from another
region of the United States or another country. "That's
what poetry is -- capturing the voice of your people," she said.

Critics
have pointed out that in "Hurricane" Galjour captures
the voice of her people masterfully. Vincent Canby of The New York Times
wrote that after seeing the one-woman show, he was surprised to see only
Galjour at the curtain call. He was expecting to see a handful of actors.
Galjour seems to juggle effortlessly her cast of Cajun characters, a
skill she honed as a children's storyteller.

Teaching
and performing keep Galjour busy but she makes time every day for writing
-- even
if only for 15 minutes. She offered this advice to
her students: "The world is not telling you to be a playwright so
you have to believe in yourself and you have to be willing to walk away
from the naysayers." She suggests that any aspiring playwright should
study the business side of the field, especially marketing.

Galjour
continues to raise funds through "Hurricane" for New
Orleans' True Brew Café Playhouse, where her long-running multicharacter
play "Okra" was a sold-out hit pre-Katrina. The playhouse,
just a few blocks from the city's convention center, is now in shambles.

"Theater is sacred. It came out of the temples … There is
a beauty in people coming together in a public space to experience something
together," Galjour said. "If theaters can't come back, artists
can't come back. We need to get New Orleans up and running. And it needs
to come back with its character intact."